Yeah I've heard a wide range for the Prius - for some reason I thought I saw a model of Prius on a news article the other day that got 40mpg highway but they might have had their facts wrong.
When you do the math, it becomes harder to justify the extra expense of a Prius over a car like the Civic. Here's my math:
Base model Civic - MSRP: $17,000 (approximately)
Base model Prius - MSRP: $23,000 (approximately, and looks like clevrname is saying they're selling for even more than that)
Let's say you get an average overall of 34mpg in the Civic, which is what I'm currently getting. We'll call the average Prius fuel economy 50mpg.
$3.50 / 34 = 0.1029 (it costs 10.29 cents to drive one mile in a Civic)
$3.50 / 50 = 0.07 (it costs 7 cents to drive one mile in a Prius)
That's a difference of 3.29 cents per mile, and you've got to make up $6,000 ($23k minus $17k) before you're going to benefit financially for buying a Prius over a Civic. So, $6,000 divided by 3.29 cents = 182,370. That is how many miles you would have to drive in your Prius before you've broken even with the Civic, financially speaking. If you drive the average 12,000 miles per year, it will take you 15 years of driving a Prius before you're financially ahead of buying a Civic. Being as the average new car owner only keeps the car for about 5 years, it is extremely unlikely that 90% of Prius owners wouldn't have been better off just buying a Civic or a Chevy Cruze or Ford Focus (etc).
Of course, that's just financially speaking. I'm sure some Prius owners truly just want to leave a smaller carbon footprint (I do know a couple Prius owners who are in this camp), and in that case it is a small price to pay. It's also worth noting that right now, I hear a used Prius sells for almost as much as a brand new one, so the depreciation on these cars is almost nill for the moment. When you factor that in, it complicates things and really makes the Prius come off looking better, but the Prius will eventually depreciate quicker than it does today (once there are more affordable hybrids on the road and available) so you can't really count on that always being the case.
Sorry for the long boring post. Truth be told I was going to go look at a Prius before I decided to buy my Civic, but I totally think I made the right choice. In the end, I think the Civic comes out on top.
lol
